Even if you’re there for the festival, which starts on Friday, there will be moments you’ll want to take a breather. A local writer suggests the best gardens, walks, beaches, parks and more

To the south of popular parkland the Meadows, Bruntsfield Links offers a quieter, calmer stretch of green, free of Big Top entertainment. Book a table at cute wine bar and cafe Margot for brunch and order french toast with ginger-poached pears and bay-leaf custard, or hot smoked trout with leek fritters. Later in the day stop by for oysters, small plates and natural wine by the glass. Bag a window-seat or a table outside to enjoy views of Arthur’s Seat, which at sunset seems to glow pink and gold. Sister restaurant LeftField on the same corner is gorgeous for an elegant dinner with the same incredible views.

A huge hit in Sweden, this portrait of one man and his dog as the end approaches is a simple yet effective meditation on mortality, love and care

Lisa Ridzén’s debut, which has been a runaway success in her Swedish homeland and elsewhere, demonstrates how sometimes the simplest storytelling can be the most effective. This is a novel with no clever structural devices or burden of symbolism and a setting so limited geographically that the reader ends up knowing precisely where everything is.

It is narrated by Bo, a former timbermill worker who has reached the age when people worry about him, and has a network of carers calling in three times a day. One of Ridzén’s inspirations was the team journal kept by the carers looking after her dying grandfather; very movingly, bulletins from the journal of Bo’s carers punctuate his narrative, the alternative perspective like a chill breeze through a briefly opened door.

Frederik Rüegger spent two years with Roma and Traveller communities across Britain and Ireland – his images capture a resilient culture increasingly under threat

In his heartwrenching followup to 20 Days in Mariupol, photojournalist Mstyslav Chernov is embedded with the 3rd Assault Brigade during a gruelling counteroffensive

Two years ago, the Ukrainian photojournalist and film-maker Mstyslav Chernov stunned us with his eyewitness documentary 20 Days in Mariupol , about Russia’s brutal assault on the southern Ukrainian port city. His new film is if anything more visceral, with waking-nightmare images captured in pin-sharp 4K digital clarity. It is a moment-by-moment account of his experience embedded with Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade in 2023 (one of them appears to be a Brit) during Zelenskyy’s highly anticipated counteroffensive, making a gruelling journey along what amounts to a two-kilometre corridor of “forest”.

In fact, it is scrubland offering no real cover – but it is free of Russian mines, unlike the areas of farmland either side. The forces brutally fight every metre of the way, heading for the symbolic liberation of the largely ruined village of Andriivka in north-eastern Ukraine. They are carrying a precious Ukrainian flag, and it is their mission to fix this to any broken bit of wall they can find, to proclaim their national spirit is not dead. They are in a wasteland, as one says: “It’s like landing on a planet where everyone is trying to kill you. But it’s the middle of Europe.”

Nothing went as planned after a talent scout plucked me from obscurity in a Japanese nightclub. Now, I was getting another chance to shine – in a rural community choir

It was 1996 and I was in a nightclub in Tokyo. I was 26 and had been living and working in Japan for three years. I was dancing, along with my friends, to the thump of hypnotic house music. Next to me, an older Japanese man wearing glasses moved closer. Dressed in a dark blue suit, the attire of a “salaryman”, he looked out of place. He puffed on a cigarette as he tapped me on the shoulder. “You look like you can sing,” he shouted over the music. Why would he think that, I wondered. Because I am Black, something of a rarity in Japan? Did he also presume I had natural rhythm and could run a speedy 100-metre dash? I told him I taught English in a language school, but he pressed a crisp meishi (business card) into my hand and said: “I’m a talent scout for a music label and you look like you can sing. Call me.”

I wasn’t sure that I could sing. Like most people, I was partial to belting out a show tune in the shower and, given that I lived in Japan, I sang at karaoke. I could hold a tune, but I was no Whitney. Still, I was curious, so I decided to call.

Destination X is best described as The Traitors meets Race Across the World. Plus, action drama Fire Country crash-lands on TV. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One
“Where the X am I?” That’s what the contestants are going to need to work out at each stage of this discombobulating new competition , which turns Europe into a board game. Rob Brydon is the man in charge, sending the gang across the continent in windowless coaches. By the end of each episode, they need to guess where they are on a map, after being fed clues (some of them fake) at stops along the way. Whoever’s guess is the furthest away is eliminated and out of the chance of winning the £100,000 prize at the final destination. Hollie Richardson

DJ Mehdi perished in a tragic accident aged 34. A new documentary, Made in France, restores his pivotal role in the electronic music revolution that grew out of 00s Paris

The late DJ Mehdi had a talent for bridging divides. At the height of the musician’s fame, Mehdi’s cousin Myriam Essadi recalls in a new documentary, he had to jet straight from a nightclub in Ibiza to his grandfather’s funeral in Tunisia. “He was wearing red glasses, white jeans and a jacket with a cross. In Tunisia! For our grandfather’s funeral!” Essadi laughs. “We didn’t get it. And in Tunisia you don’t mess with religion.”

DJ Mehdi: Made in France, a six-part documentary now available with English subtitles on Franco-German broadcaster Arte, revisits the life and tragic death of one of the most fascinating, influential and misunderstood French musicians of his generation.

This documentary about a porn star who has made millions from ‘barely legal’ videos fails to really take her to task. Its maker is no match for the steel of the interviewee

For those of you pure of heart and internet search history, Bonnie Blue (real name: Tia Billinger) is famous for being one of the most popular and highest-earning content creators to have appeared on more-or-less porn site OnlyFans. To fulfil her ambition of earning £5m a month from subscribers she needed a USP. She found it in pursuing “barely legal” sex – traditionally one of the most searched-for terms in porn – with the twist that instead of men searching for videos of other men having sex with teenage (or teenage-looking, depending on how many internet layers you’re prepared to sift through for your purposes) girls, Billinger offered herself to young men.

She had sex with them for free on condition that they gave permission for her to upload the footage to her OnlyFans account, where her subscribers pay to access her content. “She is a marketing genius,” says one of the team she has gathered round her to help administrate her growing empire. She has, in essence, introduced an entirely new way of doing porn-business. If she were working in any other field – if she had stayed in her previous job as a finance recruiter for the NHS, perhaps – and innovated to the same extent, she would probably be hailed as an extraordinary entrepreneur.

1000 Men and Me: The Bonnie Blue Story is available on Channel 4.

The Past Lives and Materialists writer-director is set to pen a follow-up to the dark, Julia Roberts-led 1997 favourite

A sequel to 1997 comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding is in the works with Celine Song tapped to write the screenplay.

According to Collider , the playwright turned writer-director, who broke out with Oscar-nominated drama Past Lives , has reportedly been hired by Sony as the film enters early development.